Note:  This post is NOT intended to express my opinion on the issue of illegal aliens. 

One of the challenges I’ve faced living here is dealing with the residents who don’t speak English.   So far, all of the non-English speaking residents that I’ve run into speak only Spanish.

There are a lot of highly charged emotional issues going on around here regarding illegal aliens, and it appears to me that the majority of the people here that do not speak Spanish automatically assume that the people who only speak Spanish MUST be illegal aliens.  I have been surprised at how many of the local English speaking residents are resisting learning to communicate with the Spanish speaking residents.

I’ve found that many of the residents who speak only English have little to no patience or desire to learn how to communicate with the residents who don’t speak English.  I took two years of Spanish in junior high school (in the 1960’s.)  Students who want to go to college are required to take two years of a foreign language, and at the time the only two foreign languages offered at my school were French and Spanish.  When I was a kid, Zorro was one of my favorite “folk heroes” and so I wanted to learn Spanish!

I had no need to use Spanish when I lived in New England, (people up there speak English or French) so my Spanish is very limited at this point in time.  If you don’t use language skills, you lose them.    I think communicating with the people around me is very important.  Because of that, I attempt to communicate, and I think I should take some measures to brush up on my Spanish.